‘Accidental’ verdict given in tragic river drowning inquest
A weekend that started with three young friends on yet another adventure, ended in anguish after one of their close-knit number died in the “most tragic” of circumstances.
Daniel Grimes would have celebrated his 28th birthday later this month. He was aged just 26 years when his lifeless body was pulled from the Woodford River at the bank of an unmapped road between Ballyconnell and Ballinamore a year and a half ago.
His inquest, which recorded a verdict of accidental death, heard how brave and repeated attempts were made to try to save the young Kildare man.
He was a backseat passenger in the car that entered the canal near Ballyheady late on Saturday afternoon, September 21, 2019.
Also speculated at last week’s hearing of the Cavan Coroner’s Court was whether the fatal accident could have been avoided had a broken fence by the canal bank been mended at the time.
It was further highlighted how incorrect co-ordinates initially directed fire crews to the opposite side of the river and asked why fire appliances are not equipped with defibrillators despite volunteers being fully trained to use the devices.
Another adventure
Just 24 hours prior, the Cabra housemates - ‘Dan’ as he was known to friends, Mark Gilroy and Oisín O’Hara, finished packing the car for a road-trip to rural west Cavan. On the cards was an overnight camp by a local lakeshore, outdoor cooking and watersports the following day. They were due to travel back to the Capital Saturday evening with more activities planned for Sunday.
Dan was driving and the trio arrived near Bawnboy shortly before 9pm. It was getting dark and they set about making camp.
Of the group, the inquest heard Mark was most familiar with the area. His dad Séamus is a native of Ballyheady and his uncle Paddy still lives in the area.
Séamus and Mark’s younger brother Éoin were planning to travel to Cavan on Saturday morning, picking up a speedboat at Ballyheady, before all would go skiing at Brackley Lake.
With the fire lit, the three friends relaxed into each other’s company. Dan cooked chicken, mashed potatoes, peppers and onions, and they cracked on with a “few drinks” before going to bed around 1am.
The following morning they woke close to 8am. Dan was first to rise, collecting firewood and cooking breakfast. They cleaned the campsite and went swimming, before travelling to Brackley at 1.30pm where, despite heavy rain, Séamus and Éoin Gilroy were already on the water.
After, and nearing 4pm, all arrived back at Mark’s uncle Paddy Gilroy’s farm.
Canal track
In a side shed the three friends found a quad, driving it down the nearby narrow gravel track that leads down to a fishing area by the canal. “I was familiar with it,” the Cavan Courthouse hearing heard, with Sergeant Dermot Lavin reading from Mark’s deposition.
“There is quite a lot of potholes and it is very twisty,” he continued. “I was sure that lane is private and that I was on my uncle’s property.”
When the friends returned, Séamus, Éoin and Paddy Gilroy were standing around a 96 Nissan Micra. The small three-door had been bought only months earlier by Séamus hoping to teach his son Mark how to drive. The car would only ever be driven around the farm for practice.
Paddy jumped the battery and petrol was put in the tank from a jerry can. “The car started. I can’t just recall who drove it out from the shed. I know it wasn’t myself,” remembers Mark, who appeared via video-link from Spain alongside Oisín.
“When I was driving the car, it was driving fine, the brakes were working,” Mark later told gardaí.
All were wearing their seatbelts when the three friends set off in the car.
Tragedy
“I was driving slow down the lane. I knew the lane was in poor condition. The reason I drove was to gain experience of driving,” reflects Mark who, on approach to a grassy turning area, took his “foot off” the accelerator.
“I put my foot on the brake and the car began slipping forward,” he recollected, pulling the handbrake as a “second option”, only to cause the rear of the hatchback to “kick out”.
Teetering with its left wheel hanging over the embankment edge, Mark took his seatbelt off. “The car was still on land. As I reached for the driver’s door handle, the car rolled upside down into the water.”
Thrown “backwards upside down”, Mark witnessed the water rising “covering the window and blocking any sunlight.”
Soon, water began filling the interior. “It is pitch dark and very cold. At this point I started thrashing around trying to break a window with my elbow. The window didn’t give out, I could find no gaps. I stopped trying to escape and waited to die.”
Thoughts of his family spurred Mark to react. A “strong” swimmer and qualified lifeguard, despite taking breaths of water, he found a “tiny gap” in the window with his fingers, breaking a piece of the glass away through sheer persistence.
“It was really tiny. I went for this gap head first and succeeded in getting out and swam to the top.”
At the surface Mark realised he was only one out. Now fully submerged, several yards from shore and only the bottom of the wheels visible, an exhausted Mark dived down to try rescue his friends.
Rescue
On a second attempt he found the gap he’d earlier escaped and grabbed “what felt like an arm”.
“Working from touch” alone he squeezed the body of Oisín through. “I had to use all my strength to get the person’s head out,” remembers Mark, dressed in a black-coloured t-shirt, and who became emotional as details from his deposition were read back.
Now “hyper ventilating”, the two friends took turns trying to reach the car again, diving half a dozen more times between them, by which time Séamus and Éoin Gilroy arrived at the scene.
They too entered and it took three more attempts diving down before Mark was finally able to pull Dan under and past the upside down cars front seats and through the broken driver’s side window. “His face looked blue and there was a cut underneath his left eye.”
CPR was administered to Dan at the canal bank but there were “no signs” of response.
The fire service arrived, followed by the ambulance service, who then took over the attempt to resuscitate the young man.
The deposition of Oisín, as well as that of Séamus Gilroy, corroborated Mark’s account.
Oisín too spoke of the frightening experience of being trapped as the car slowly dipped below the water, and of “giving up hope” at making it out alive.
From Paddy Gilroy’s deposition, the inquest heard how almost a decade earlier a trailer had been stolen from his farm, that ultimately ended up entering the canal at the bottom of the gravel laneway breaking the fence. The trailer had to be removed using a digger.
Mr Gilroy asserted that only he and one other farmer used the lane. Some weeks after Dan’s death Inland Fisheries Ireland fixed the fence.
Response
David Rogers outlined how Ballyconnell Fire Crew received the emergency call at 6:01pm, with the first unit arriving at the scene 22 minutes later. A second appliance arrived not long after that, and an ambulance at 6:31pm.
He explained the initial dispatch was for Toberlion. But Paddy Gilroy called Mr Rogers, who he knows personally, asking him to bring a defibrillator and directing him to the correct address at Killarah. Mr Rogers then radioed this information back to the Eastern Regional Central Control.
Mr Rogers said the original dispatch coordinates would have been triangulated from the nearest mobile phone masts. “We can only go where we’re sent.”
He noted that fire appliances in Cavan are now equipped with defibrillators but he wasn’t aware if the same protocol applied elsewhere around the country.
“I don’t think in this instance it would have made a difference,” conceded Mr Rogers when asked by the Grimes family if the outcome may have been different had the appliance been equipped with a defibrillator.
The depositions of paramedic Philip Kilkenny and Sergeant Shane Heslin, attached to Ballyconnell Garda Station, who oversaw the investigation, were also read out.
Paul Grimes, father of the deceased, recalled gardaí from Naas arriving at the Grimes’ family home to inform them their son had been involved in an accident and passed away. He spoke with Sgt Heslin by phone and requested that Daniel’s body remain there until they could be by his side.
Investigation of scene
Garda Aveline Duffy, trained forensic crash investigator, inspected the scene and the vehicle.
There was around eight metres of fence missing by the canal bank and, without ABS, Gda Duffy likened the wet grassy surface to driving on “ice”.
“Excessive speed was not a factor,” she confirmed.
She could not determine if a fence would have been enough to halt the vehicle’s drift towards the canal. It would have also depended on how well the fence was “maintained”.
County Coroner Dr Mary Flanagan asked if a metal fence at the same location would have been “more sturdy”. Gda Duffy replied “yes”.
Mark was asked the same question, expressing the clear opinion if there had been “anything in the way at all” it would have stopped the car sliding as it did.
“So it could have saved somebody’s life,” remarked Dr Flanagan, while noting inexperienced driving and the wet ground surface as other factors.
Mr Grimes’ body was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Navan where a post-mortem was carried out by Consultant Pathologist Dr Munah Sabeh.
She found his lungs hyper-inflated and containing fluid - consistent with signs of drowning. His body also showed multiple abrasions - to his forehead, hand, wrist and knees.
“Most likely he lost consciousness before death,” said the pathologist, who affirmed that drowning usually takes between four and six minutes to occur.
Toxicology reported no evidence of either alcohol or drugs.
The late Daniel Grimes, of The Lodge, Kilteel, Rathmore, is survived by his parents Paul and Karen and sister Laura, all of whom were present at the inquest.
Members of Gilroy family were also in attendance.
Sympathy was extended by Dr Flanagan to the Grimes family and his friends on “this most tragic sequence of events”.
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